Ruth Dudley Edwards: If we care about the future of the West, we must stand with Israel in its fight for survival against Hamas death cult

One the most depressing aspects of these protests is the profound ignorance displayed. To see young people carrying a placard saying “Queers for Gaza”, is so stupid it’s comic.

An obvious homosexual would be highly unlikely to survive a day anywhere ruled by the homophobic, racist, sexist, sectarian bigots of Hamas.

As for Jews?

Israel was created in 1948 by British mandate. The Jews accepted the proffered deal and set about creating a peaceful and prosperous society. Arab leaders instead began decades of bloody war.

Seventy-five years on, almost all Jews are long gone from Arab countries, 150,000 from Iraq, 75,000 from Egypt and many tens of thousands from neighbouring countries.

Two million Arabs, one-fifth of the population and most of them Muslim, live in Israel, with equal voting rights and access to public service jobs.

Knowing what I know about the history of the Jews, I'm unhappily in favour of uncompromising opposition to Hamas. Israel withdrew its troops and settlers from Gaza in 2005: since 2007 Hamas has been in complete control of the Gaza Strip.

It is a death cult which spends most of the international aid on weapons, cares nothing for the well-being of its people and is happy to have any number of them killed during its endless warfare against Israel, which it intends to destroy.

When the Jew-haters and their ignorant young supporters chant, “From the river to the sea Palestine will be free”, they are asking for the end of the only democratic country in the Middle East and the expulsion or murder of every Jew in the region.

So too, is any styled gullible peace-maker who calls for a ceasefire which would inevitably give Hamas time to regroup and rearm.

That is what is genocide. Israel’s fight for survival is not. It is Hamas’s deliberate planting of rocket launchers and fuel stores and fighters in hospitals and schools that is bringing death and destruction on their people. It is their hoarding of fuel and supplies in the labyrinth of tunnels and at present keep them hungry and thirsty.

I am deeply shamed that Ireland, the country in which I grew up, is now the most anti-Semitic in Europe.

Sinn Fein have been as usual immensely effective carriers of toxic hatred, gleefully competing with the hard left to be most vile about Israel.

Meanwhile, in Northern Ireland, in his ignorant stupidity, Joe Brolly is excelling in the contest for top of the outrageous pops.

He calls Israel “a rogue state”. Last week he posted a cartoon, vividly described by this newspaper’s Adam Kula as portraying “Gaza as a kind of walled vat under Israeli control, into which are pouring bullets from soldiers and out of which is pouring blood – all while figures embodying the USA and EU look on.”

“Why do Ulster Scot Protestants support genocide?” he began a recent tweet. “The mass murder of men, women and children? Why do they champion it with such relish – crush, erase, eradicate, destroy 8,000 murdered already. How many dead kids is enough? 10,000? 100,000? 500,000?”

Here’s some context, in a tweet from Simon Taylor, a Jewish friend married to a Muslim, about the blindness of the protestors to what’s going on under their noses and in the world in general:

“Here are the facts. Arabs/Muslims kill one another on a daily basis with a silence from the usual suspects so deafening it makes a Concorde take off seem quiet. Six hundred thousand dead in Syria, nope. Thousands dead in Yemen, nada, Islamic State (now defunct) slaughtered and raped Yazidi women, nah. Israel defends itself after the most heinous crime ever seen by anyone for over fifty years, marches and demonstrations throughout Europe. Ain’t that the truth.”

If we care about the future of the West, we have to stand by Israel.